Juniper Research: Smartphone shipments exceed 200 million in Q4 2012

Juniper Research is joining the “smartphone numbers” game with its own estimates. The research company says that the number of smartphone shipments exceeded 200 million in the fourth quarter of 2012, with the annual total reaching 671 million. That’s an annual growth of almost 42%!

Needless to say, Samsung is the big winner, having shipped a record 63 million smartphones while accounting for over 30% of all smartphone shipments in the quarter. The Galaxy S3 drove the growth, with sales surpassing 40 million in November 2012. Apple is the second biggest smartphone maker with 47.8 million iPhones sold, setting a record quarter for the company.

Some other findings include:

Nokia shipped 6.6 million smart devices in Q4, 4.4 million of which were Lumia smartphones. Symbian-based handsets experienced a large decline, reaching just 2.2 million.

RIM’s recent results are expected to account for almost 6.7 million smartphone shipments for Q4 and over 31 million for the year. BlackBerry 10 and a new line of smartphones will struggle to gain back a significant market share in 2013.

Huawei introduced over 23 smartphone models and few tablets, posting sales revenues of over $35 billion. The Chinese company have shipped almost 20 million smartphones in 2012.

LG and ZTE have managed to maintain their smartphone market shares, but they are still facing challenges when competing against the premium brands.